Posted on: November 24, 2025
It has been a lively semester at TRU’s Williams Lake Campus Library.
Events
Pride in the Puddle
In August, we helped represent TRU at the annual Pride in the Puddle. Visitors to our booth were invited to make their own pride-themed buttons or a library “Stay Curious” Sk’elep button designed by Kamloops-based artist and librarian Stirling Prentice. We also gave out our entire print run of 30 zines about Two-spirit, Non-binary, and Trans media and resources.
Pizza and Planning
In September we had our best attended Pizza and Planning event to date! Throughout the night almost 50 students, staff, and community members got to know each other, planned their semesters and decorated wall calendars, and did coursework with the generous help of on-site faculty and student support staff. Four lucky students also left with coupons for free pizzas thanks to the library’s partnership with local business Red Tomato Pies.
Coffee and Coursework
Pizza and Planning was so well received that students requested a series of smaller, earlier events to give them more opportunities to work with their instructors. This has given rise to our library-sponsored “Coffee and Coursework” drop-in sessions, which took place from 2-4 PM on October 16 and November 12 with Michele Bebault and on October 20 and November 24 with Beth Bedard.
Coffee Cart
Since coffee is a popular theme, this semester also marks the launch of our coffee cart pilot project in the learning commons where students can get free instant coffee and tea while getting help from Dustin Batty, the learning commons tutor.
Book Club
The TRU Williams Lake Wellness Committee approached the library in August about facilitating a faculty and staff book club. In September we read Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese, a story of hockey and surviving the residential school system. For October, we read The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski, part of the Witcher series.
The Gaming and Multimedia Lab
Collaborating with Dallas Hengstler from the local nursing program, the Williams Lake Campus library has seen its new Gaming and Multimedia Lab used to helped facilitate guest lectures on game-based learning and learning from games. Students attended a presentation on the commonalities between game and learning design thinking and then broke up into groups as they examined games from the library’s collection as an inspiration for their own educational game design projects. On October 7th from 3-5 PM the lab hosted a Magic: The Gathering event using material from the library’s Indigenous Gaming Showcase as an opportunity to talk about different ways that cultural consultation does or does not translate into game design and gaming literacies. Other events at the lab included an open day on October 21, a chance to play the Iñupiat game Never Alone on November 4, and a sound recording workshop on December 2.
Serendipitous Discovery and Collections Development
There’s a concept in library science called “serendipitous discovery,” the process by which people find new material that is relevant to them based on the “lucky accidents” of how different resources are placed beside each other in physical or digital space. This is one of the many reasons why it is valuable to have resources in multiple different formats or collections (in digital settings this also includes making use of different search algorithms). Each new curation of a knowledge object gives library users another “roll of the dice” as it were to potentially find something new and interesting based on their existing searches. With this in mind, the Williams Lake Campus Library has been renewing and updating its physical collection. Upcoming acquisitions include titles such as Nursing a Radical Imagination: Moving from Theory and History to Action and Alternate Futures, Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare, Beyond the Rink Behind the Images of Residential School Hockey, and Native American DNA Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science.
Student Council Elections
As a satellite to the main campus back in Kamloops, things often work differently here in Williams Lake, and the library is called upon to facilitate a much broader range of campus functions. This year these functions have included helping the Williams Lake Student Council run its elections. Many people do not seem to realize that Williams Lake students are not represented by TRUSU and thus do not have access to many of the same benefits, such as health and dental care, as their Kamloops-based classmates. There are also unique challenges the council faces in long term planning and continuity given that the maximum time any given student will be present on campus is two years, rather than the usual four. We at the library are honoured to be able to help facilitate student governance at TRU’s Williams Lake Campus and look forward to seeing what the new council plans for the coming year!
With more events on the horizon, it’s been a full semester at the library, with many more to come.
Ben Mitchell
Williams Lake Campus Librarian
Ben Mitchell (he/they) is the librarian at TRU’s Williams Lake campus. Explore Ben’s research interests and publications at libraryben.trubox.ca, or connect with the Williams Lake Campus Library by emailing bemitchell@tru.ca.
